


Eight Legs and a Web (But Not a Spider)

by Goethicite



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Cluster Complications, Complicated Relationships, Dysphoria, Multi, sexual identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you've remade yourself into who you're supposed to be, it's scary to think you might be someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Legs and a Web (But Not a Spider)

**Author's Note:**

> See bottom for warnings.

The first time Nomi looks at a man and actually feels desire, she panics. It takes Lito crooning, "No, dove, no. I am so sorry. That's not you. That's not you. It's me. He's very pretty, and I love Hernando but I still feel." He presses his hand to his belly. "Here when I see beautiful men, my body still wants. My heart only wants Hernando." He wraps his arms around Nomi. "You are still yourself. I was just seeing something similar at the same time. Like when two of us hear a song at once."

"I just," Nomi inhales wetly and buries her face in his shoulder. Lito is feeling so guilty for upsetting her. It's ridiculous. He couldn't have known, but she loves them so much. So much she's afraid about how not afraid she is if keeping them means losing herself. "We need to talk, all of us," she tells him. "If this going to become a thing like craving beer and Indian food, the others need to know. Because feeling that, something so essential about yourself shift. Oh God, Lito." She shudders.

Lito winces at the echo of the memory. "Shh, I'll keep my eyes to myself for awhile." He kisses the top of Nomi's head. "Tonight, when Sun and Kala wake up we will figure this out." He holds her face between his hands, tipping her head up towards him. "You are a beautiful, brilliant, rebellious woman, Nomi. That is how we know you, how we feel you, how we love you."

"It's not your fault, Lito," Nomi says, leaning into his touch. "This is all so fucked up."

Amanita leans over Nomi, "Baby, are you okay?"

"Yeah," Nomi breathes. "Lito's here. I felt… Ugh, I felt like I liked guys. It freaked me out."

"You don't like guys," Amanita says though it sounds a bit like a question.

"Lito does, and Riley, and Kala. Wolfgang… looks, but he's complicated." Nomi rubs reflexively at her cheek though the bruise is long healed. "Wolfgang's very complicated, but this was stupid. Lito saw a guy he liked the look of, and I saw a guy who looked nice, you know, aesthetically. It just leaked over."

Amanita leans against Nomi's other side. "He came when you got upset?"

Even though she can't hear him, Amanita can see glimpses of the others when they travel to Nomi but hasn't been able to hear them yet, Lito apologizes to her. "I am so sorry. I did not mean to cause Nomi any pain."

"He's apologizing for upsetting me," Nomi tells Amanita.

"I know you would never hurt her on purpose, Lito." Amanita looks directly at him, practiced at judging where the others are from Nomi's body language. "Especially you."

Lito looks to the side, and Nomi's on a film set with him. He's ignoring an assistant waving a script to be with her. "Don't worry." She pats his arm. "I'll talk it out with Amanita. You need to get back to work."

"If you are okay," Lito says uncertainly. The production assistant looks at him like he's insane.

"I'm sure. Tonight. Warn Hernando." Nomi hugs him and goes back to the rat hole apartment she and Amanita are renting with cash.

Amanita is speaking to Riley when Nomi comes back outside her own body. She'd felt the nudge of request when Riley appeared and had lent the DJ her mouth so she and Amanita could talk. "Tonight," Nomi tells Riley. "I'm okay. Just… a little shook up."

"We know," Will says. Even when he travels he's got the blindfold on. It doesn't do anything to make his solid presence less soothing. "I've felt it too. It's… not comfortable."

"It's a little easier for Capheus and I," Riley says, and Nomi's back in her own body.

"It is a gift from God," Capheus says cheerfully, examining the computers in the corner. "So if I feel something new, it cannot be unnatural. Just different than what I felt before."

Riley nods, "I've always been flexible. So it's just stronger than it used to be for me."

Nomi smiles at Capheus. Everything feels a little less heavy when he's immediately present. "We should talk tonight. This isn't going away, and I don't even want to think about the shock Kala's going to get when it happens to her."

"I think Wolfgang has made her mostly immune to other people's bullshit," Will says wryly.

Riley smacks his shoulder. "You're right, Nomi. We do need to warn the others and decide how we want to deal with it. There should be some way to avoid another…" She trails off, flushing red as Will does.

They convene on the Van Damme. Capheus is cleaning, and they all pitch in as they talk. "That is awful," Kala tells Nomi seriously. "If it happens again. You should wake me up. I have very nice books. You can use my body to read."

"Thank you," Nomi says, warmed through because she can feel how much Kala wants to give Nomi a body which never traumatized the hacker, a perfectly formed clean slate. Nomi sprays cleaner on the window in front of her. "I'm okay now, but it was very upsetting at the time."

"It's still disconcerting," Will sighs. He can't see. So he's polishing something metal with a rag Capheus had given him. 

Sun's eyes go wide as she feels his memory. "Disconcerting," she agrees, breath hitching slightly. "But not unpleasant for you?"

Will shakes his head. "Not in the moment. Afterwards, I was uncomfortable."

"Dirty jockstraps are the worst," Lito commiserates, wiping up a puddle of something questionable.

Kala's bright red, shifting as she catches the wash of heat. "Oh my goodness!"

Capheus delicately pats her shoulder. "Sex can make you feel very nice if you love each other," he assures her.

"Capheus is right," Riley says between the sneezing caused by the window cleaner. "Nomi was with Amanita and Lito was with Hernando. It wasn't fucking. It was making love."

"Then why me?" Wolfgang asks. He's applying stain remover to the upholstery of a seat. "Why Will? We weren't," his lip curls up derisively, "making love."

Sun hums, "You were lonely." She scrubs with her sponge at some mud caked on the floor. "You were not making love, but you wanted to be intimate." The word makes her shake her head. Wolfgang glares at her. Sun levels him with a frosty, neutral raised eyebrow until he looks away.

"So it was not the sex," Lito interjects. "It was the act of love that caused us to reach for each other?"

Will nods. "It makes sense. We know strong emotions cause us to travel. That kind of love is a pretty intense."

"Dopamine, prolactin, oxytocin, androgen receptors, PEA," Kala lists. "It is a very potent mixture. More pleasant than the neurochemicals associated with fear reactions but similar." Quietly she adds, "The lack of neurochemicals associated with social bonding can provoke a stress reaction similar to depression. It is, in it's own way, also very intense."

Capheus hands Will an engine part to clean. "That is why it did not affect us so strongly, because we were not as lonely?"

Kala shrugs, "It is a theory."

"It's a good theory," Riley says firmly. "And it gives us an idea of what to expect. Will won't be as affected anymore. Sun, you may get pulled in if it happens again." Sun inclines her head in reluctant agreement.

"I'm less worried about another… Another accidental orgy, and more about the fact I looked at a man like I wanted him and didn't feel nauseous," Nomi groans. Lito looks up at her with the face of a kicked puppy. "Put the big, wet eyes away. I'm not mad."

Capheus hums. "When I feel desire for men, I know it is my own desire. But it is still of a different flavor than what comes from myself."

Will looks towards his voice. "You can distinguish between what's coming from us and what's happening in your body?"

"It is like Sun," Capheus says slowly. "I feel her anger. It is not my anger, and I feel grieved she must be so angry. So I am angry and grieved, but the anger is different than when thieves took the money for my mother's medicine. Not lesser. Just different."

"It is like when Riley is sad then?" Sun asks. She looks at the pale woman. "I feel it, and I react to it. They are separate though."

Kala suddenly says, "When I was scared, Will came. He was angry."

Will explains, "I was scared too, but it wasn't the same as being scared in my body. The anger was because you were scared Kala. You should never have to be scared like that."

"Thank you, Will," Kala murmurs, leaning over to hug him.

"For me, it is like acting," Lito explains. "I am still Lito, but I feel what my character feels. These feelings exist together. If my character is hurt, I am sad for him. But I am not my character."

Nomi leans against Lito, because she needs his almost overwhelming empathy if she's going to talk about this. "At the time, I was too horrified to really process," she admits. "I'm not really comfortable with another paradigm shift in myself."

"That is completely understandable," Lito assures her.

"The reaction was organic. It didn't feel other," Nomi says uncertainly.

Riley quickly stops her before Nomi can talk herself down an uncomfortable rabbit hole. "The reaction came from the cluster. It was organic. It just wasn't your reaction. We are, functionally, one organism with eight, conscious limbs. If one limb is injured, you feel the pain, are aware of it. It does not mean you are hurt."

"I fucking hate metaphors. We are not a fucking spider," Wolfgang grumbles.

"It's not like anyone has read a textbook that explains sensates, Wolfgang," Will sighs. "Let it go."

"I don't think there's anything you can do to not feel us," Riley tells Nomi gently. "But you will always love Amanita. Nomi Marks loves women. That hasn't changed. If something doesn't feel like you, then it's probably one of us."

Nomi huffs. "Rationally, I know that, but in the moment…" Lito hugs her.

"I can't imagine," Riley admits. "I can feel, but I can't…" There are no words for this in any language, the knowing and not knowing.

"We should train," Sun says quietly. "Reach for each other when we feel. Learn to recognize what is one, what is another, what is many."

Capheus points at her, "That is wisdom."

Kala adds, "If we are one, perhaps we should meditate as one. Try to make it feel more natural."

"That's good," Lito says. "Except I don't meditate."

"Remember that song," Will interrupts. "Hey, hey, hey, hey, what's going."

Riley agrees eagerly, "We could do that again. Except on purpose. It's almost like meditation."

That's how sing-alongs become the official bonding activity of their cluster. It doesn't fix everything. Nomi still has moments of utter terror when someone sees something they like. Will will probably never stop trying to process he's not normal. Riley still wakes up everyone with her nightmares. Lito won't ever feel completely comfortable with the way he sometimes finds himself watching Daniela. Wolfgang accidentally invites himself into bedrooms. Kala doesn't know what the right choice is. Sun's in jail. Capheus doesn't know how to tell his mother. It's still always guaranteed to make them all smile when Riley slips on her headphones and starts humming.

**Author's Note:**

> Nomi (understandably) freaks out because she accidentally feels Lito's attraction to men. The cluster does try to work out how to help each other deal with unwanted borrowing.


End file.
